Page 101 of Two Hit Wonder

She was going to be sick. She was definitely going to be sick. Or pass out. Possibly both.

"Iona." She turned. Maeve was right behind her, close enough to touch. "Don't fall over," Maeve said.

"Thanks. Very helpful."

"I mean it. I'm right behind you. If you fall, I'm going to trip over you, and then we're both going to look like idiots."

It shouldn't have been funny. But it was funny. Iona laughed, startled, and some of the tension in her chest loosened. "I'll try my best."

"That's all I ask." There was a heartbeat of silence. "It’s all I’ll ever ask."

But there was no time to digest that. A stage tech was waving at them. Time to go.

Iona walked out first. The lights hit her like a wall, blinding and brilliant, and the roar of the crowd was so loud it seemed to have a texture. She found the microphone stand by muscle memory, wrapped her fingers around the cool metal, and waited for the others to take their places.

Cam settled behind the drums with a grin that was slightly manic. Ellie found her spot with the bass, steady and calm. And Maeve, Maeve walked to center stage like she owned it, like she'd never left, like fifteen years in a Scottish cottage had just been a particularly long intermission.

Iona leaned into the microphone. "Hello, Lakeside."

The crowd screamed. She waited for it to subside into something resembling quiet. "We're The Stage Women." Not The Stage Girls.

She hadn't discussed it with anyone. Hadn't asked permission. But it felt right. They weren't who they used to be. They'd grown. They'd survived. They were different now.

She looked directly at Maeve as she said it.

Maeve's expression didn't change. But something in her eyes did.

They began to play.

✽✽✽

Something was happening.

Maeve had played hundreds of gigs in her life. She knew what a good crowd felt like, what it meant when the energy shifted from polite interest to genuine engagement to something electric and alive.

This was something else entirely.

The crowd was with them. Not just listening, but responding. Moving. Singing along to songs that had been released before half of them were born, and singing along to new ones they'd never heard before. Singing because the music made them want to.

Three songs in, she'd stopped being afraid. Four songs in, she'd started enjoying herself. By the sixth song, she was grinning, actually grinning, which probably ruined the terrifying image she'd been cultivating for the past fifteen years.

She didn't care.

Cam was in her element, drumming like she'd been possessed. Ellie was steady and solid, the bassline anchoring everything else. And Iona was radiant, lit up from within, her guitar weaving through Maeve's like it had always belonged there.

They were good. Not just competent, not just adequate. Genuinely, properly good.

Maeve felt it in her bones, in her chest, in the spaces between her ribs. The pure, clean high of performing, better than anything she'd ever tried to drown herself in. This was what she'd been running from for fifteen years. This was what she'd been terrified of.

It was also, she realized, exactly where she was supposed to be.

They finished their second-to-last song, and the crowd noise swelled to fill the gap. Maeve looked at Ellie, who was smiling her small, tired smile. At Cam, who was sweating and beaming and looked like she might actually explode with joy. At Iona, whose face was flushed and beautiful and turned toward her like a sunflower toward the sun.

Right. It was now or never.

She hadn't told anyone about this. Not Cam, not Ellie, definitely not Iona. She'd brought her acoustic guitar, told them she wanted it for one of the slower numbers, and they'd believed her because why wouldn't they?

So she traded her electric for the acoustic. Her hands were steady, which surprised her.